Material World, Not-so-Material Girl

Ruthless, aggressive, and cheap with
products manufactured with slave labor and
a fabulously wealthy ruling junta, sort
of like the North Korea of retail.

So, I have spent my whole career in public service, first as a teacher and then as a state employee. I did work at the college bookstore for a couple of weeks once, but that is pretty much the extent of my experience in the private sector. (Fun Fact: my first job was in the Texas A&M Chemistry Department, conducting the same Chemistry 101 experiment over and over to figure out why the answer key was wrong. Good news: despite my sub-par chemistry skills, I solved the mystery. Bad news: because of my sub-par chemistry skills, my sense of smell was permanently damaged. All for minimum wage!) Needless to say, I find things like marketing and advertising a strange sort of foreign country, fascinating to watch on the news and read about, but not really anyplace I'd want to take the family on a vacation.

Oh, you glorious instrument
of distraction!

Anyway, this morning I found myself distracted by the signage at one of the local shopping centers. Our building cafeteria was closed, so I had stopped for a breakfast taco at Taco Cabana. If you've had their chorizo, egg and cheese tacos (the only variety of breakfast taco I get excited about), you know they are (a) delicious and (b) really drippy, particularly after adding salsa. To eat one in the car, you have to maintain absolute focus on creating a little aluminum foil bowl with the wrapper and be prepared to sop up any impending drips with napkins. You definitely cannot look up at the storefronts and wonder what a Foot Navy is. Is it an Old Navy for shoes? Some sort of weird pedicure place? Then, upon realizing that you're looking at a Foot Heaven massage place located entirely too close to a U.S. Navy recruiting center, wonder whether business people think about the words they choose to make extra large on their signs in relation to the shop next door, before wondering whether that Foot Massage place is taking the place of the make-your-own wine place where you bought four-bosses-ago a gift card years ago, before realizing you've just spilled taco drippings all over your shirt and pants and it isn't even 8:00. This, folks, is why concentration is so important, which is unfortunate, because I have the attention span of a crack-addled squirrel. I briefly considered spilling some of my coffee on the taco stains, on the theory that coffee is a more socially acceptable aroma than taco. Because if you walk into an elevator smelling like coffee, people go, ahhhh, and it puts them in their happy place (especially on Monday morning), where as if you smell like a taco, they question your life skills (and hygeine) and back slowly into the opposite corner. But, in the end, I opted for a quick detour to the bathroom to rinse out the taco stains. Mainly because I wasn't sure my weak coconut-milk-coffee would be able to take on the pungent aroma of spilled chorizo juice and salsa.

Anyway, emphasizing the FOOT in Foot Heaven next to a Navy recruiting station that may be making some sort of political statement by not including "U.S." in its sign (or maybe it was budget cuts...punctuation is expensive) is just poor planning, a failure to look at the big picture. A deliberate advertising strategy I just don't get is continually played out by the local U-Haul company. Periodically, they advertise specials on their sign. Today's special was one way, Round Rock to Waco, $99. This got me thinking...

"Great Balls of Bubblewrap, Martha! Round Rock to Waco is
only $99! Sure, we've got houses and jobs and two storage
pods full of crap, but $99...you just don't find a deal like that!
Pack up the Precious Moments, we're moving to Waco!"

Does that actually work? I mean, my understanding of the point of advertising is to get people to change their behavior. I wasn't feeling particularly hungry, but I saw that Sonic billboard and next thing I know, I've got a strawberry cream slush in my hand. I was feeling okay about my car, but after looking at that ad, I'm in the showroom. That's sort of the idea, right? But moving between cities is usually something that you plan. There's not a whole lot of spontaneity there. And it's not like you're going to decide between places to live based on a special on a 14' truck rental ("Well, I did have that job lined up in Dallas, but...the U-haul is $50 more, so you may go to hell [person who made job offer], I'm going to Waco!"). So, I really don't get their thought process, but maybe other people are more spontaneous about that sort of thing, because there's often some sort of special posted.

Probably the most powerfully effective bit of advertising I've seen recently was the simple, black-and-white sign outside a local bar: "Thursday--Drag Bingo." Now, I don't gamble or wear make up or high heels, I am straight, and my bling quotient is almost tragically low...but the juxtaposition of those two words from two very different worlds was quite intriguing. Who needs a spontaneous move to Waco or even miniature cannons pelting your feet with bath salts at Foot Navy, when there's something as potentially fabulous as drag bingo in the world? I was definitely tempted. At the very least, it gave me much to think about in the rush hour traffic on the way home.